In a Prologue written for the opening of his own Intimate Theatre in Stockholm in 1907, Strindberg speaks of the journey that mankind must undertake “from the Isle of the Living to the Isle of the Dead.” He was alluding to Arnold Böcklin's well-known paintings, copies of which at his request had been placed at either side of the stage in this theatre (Falck, 1935: 53).

In his chamber play The Ghost Sonata (1907), we witness a similar journey. The house we see on the stage represents the House of Life which at the end vanishes and is replaced by the Isle of the Dead. Along with the Student, we gradually discover that the house which looks attractive on the outside (Act I), inside is in poor shape (Act II). Life may not be what we had expected but the Student is convinced that amor vincit omnia (Act III). Yet even this proves to be an illusion. Like everyone else, the beloved Young Lady is “sick at the source of life,” tainted by Original Sin. The attractive house proves to be a mirage. Will the source be found in the after-life?

The play title alludes to the fact that if life on earth is a shadow life and that we are all ‘ghosts’ – whereas those who appear as ghosts in the play, although dead, are the truly ‘living.’ In quite another sense, the title alludes to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor (Op. 31, No. 2), usually called Der Sturm (The Tempest). In a letter to his German translator, Emil Schering, Strindberg refers to it as the Gespenster (Ghost) sonata. He had used it in an earlier play, Crimes and Crimes, to indicate the pangs of conscience afflicting the protagonist. The subtitle of The Ghost Sonata, “Chamber Play Opus III,” suggests that the author had a ‘musical’ structure in mind, in accordance with his own definition of the term ‘chamber play’: “the concept of chamber music transferred to drama. The intimate action, the highly significant motif, the sophisticated treatment” (Strindberg, 1959: 19).

B's interest in the play can be traced back to 1930. “When I was twelve,” he writes, “I read The Ghost Sonata for the first time. I had bought it in a second-hand bookshop and planned to stage it in my puppet theatre.”